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He doesn’t give much thought to the girl. Not at first.
They’ve been taking turns looking after her for a while now— him and Padmé and occasionally even Snips, when she’s not busy doing Force-knows-what. From the moment the Dyad had shattered on Exegol, at least one of them has been her constant companion, gathering the trail of grief she drags in her wake like the train of a bridal gown. It’s the least they could do for the woman his grandson had loved so much, more so than life itself.
For Anakin Skywalker knows something of how that feels.
So he watches over her as she curls up in her too-empty bunk, both dreading and wishing for unconsciousness: the only time she can reunite with her soul’s mate, only to be torn away each time the dreams fade. Padmé runs ghostly hands through her hair as she cries herself awake, singing a lullaby the grieving woman cannot hear. Ahsoka nudges open the Falcon’s food storage every so often in reminder, and seals away the razor-edged rotary blades. Small things. Insignificant things, in the face of all the agony his family has suffered. They try— stars, do they try, watching over Rey in all the ways they had failed Ben.
But none of them think to examine the journals until it’s too late.
It’s past midnight when she rises, padding through the emptied halls of the Falcon like it’s she who is the ghost among them. Ahsoka is gone, tending to her own private interests, and Padmé is resting among the rivers of the Force— it tires her to hold the corporeal form they take so easily, and she’s been exhausting herself lately, out of concern for the girl.
So it’s Anakin, alone, watching her lay out the old leather-bound journals with something like reverence. Hence why he pays her no mind: this is hardly the first time she’s turned to the texts for guidance.
Personally, the teachings of long-dead Jedi have never been of any interest to him. Anakin had suffered far too many masters in his lifetime to consider adding another teacher’s burdens, and such simple pleasures as reading had always been just out of reach during the tumultuous war anyways. But Rey seems to find comfort in this connection to the Jedi Order of the past, no matter how tenuous a connection it may be, and he can hardly begrudge her this when she has lost every other Force-sensitive who had ever stepped into her life.
Later, he will curse his inattentiveness. It’s this alone that causes him to miss it: the moment she turns to a page he’s never seen before, a page inked with designs that belong to no Jedi. Anakin looks on as she sets down the journal, grief hardening into a stony determination borne of far too much loss in far too little time.
She traces a foreign, razor-sharp symbol onto the metal flooring. She settles back in a position that ought to be reminiscent of meditation, but is laced with a far more unnatural intent. She calls out to the Force in a voice that is not her own. mikashi shur tu’ruun. mikashi shur sicha. The Force hisses with anticipation, coiling around her like a predator as she recites. mikashi shur tu’ruun. mikashi shur sicha.
Anakin knows this voice.
Oh, this tongue may be foreign to him. But he knows this voice like he knows his own mother, like he knows his own soul. It’s taken on many names— Plagueis, Sidious, Snoke —but its true purpose has always remained the same, hasn’t it? Darkness can never maintain its false form for long, not when the core of its being is absence. And he recognizes this power now, intertwined as it is with the memories of his time among the living.
Waking from a nightmare with Padmé’s name on his lips. Grief tearing a gaping hole in what’s left of his heart, and darkness filling the hollow within, whispering its false promises of fullness. Embracing the darkness just to feel something that isn’t pain, to know a life that isn’t dictated by Padmé’s absence.
How many more generations of Skywalkers will turn to the dark for a love they could not save? How many more times must Anakin watch his own life play out in the lives of his descendants?
mikashi shur tu’ruun
Rey’s skin is pale as death, her breathing erratic. The Force moves in for the kill, its cruel threads of fate twining around her limbs. This, too, is familiar, a scene that had played out decades before as he knelt before a power far greater than himself. He remembers the crooning promise it had offered him then: only I can save the one you love. It offers her the same now, holding out the respite like a hand to the drowning woman. Drowning in grief, and drowning in fear, and will they forever be doomed to repeat this moment?
mikashi shur sicha
But he is far from the young man who’d cowered at the feet of cruel masters. He is one with the living Force, gaining in death the raw power to do what his past self could not. He can stop this endless cycle. He can stop this.
Anakin Skywalker had turned to the darkness for love, yes. But he had returned to the light for just the same. And he is tired of watching fate tear his family apart.
Rey reaches out to the Force once more.
please.
And this time it is Anakin who answers.
After all the pain it has put his family through, the Force owes him a debt. I have sacrificed for you, he says to fate itself. I have given everything.
Let them have the happiness that I could not.
Rey’s eyes fly open as the Force calms around her, terror crashing over her features. He can feel her panic lash through the air as the darkness slips through her fingers, returning to the shadows where it belongs. No. No, no no— come back, please—
He steps into the light. Cautiously, at first; then, when she’s seen him, with more decisiveness. Anakin can read the disappointment scrawled across her face like a book, and the crushing defeat is like a mirror into the past. “This isn’t a path you want to take.”
“Who are you?” She reaches for the journal once more, but Anakin has learned better: he flicks it shut with a twitch of the Force, stealing it from her grasp.
“Someone who learned that truth the hard way.”
“Give it back.” She stumbles to her feet, anger threading through her desperation. “You have no right— you don’t understand—“
This, Anakin thinks, is the problem with prophecies. They always destroy the prophesized. “I understand more than you think.”
“Then you know why I need to do this.”
“I know the way you’ve chosen is a lie.” He draws a breath, takes a gamble. “I can bring him back.”
“And if you’re the liar?” Her eyes narrow, and she flicks one hand towards the scrawled-over journal. “Why should I trust you any more than this?”
They stand at an impasse, each desperate in their own way. But this is one battle that he must win, more so than any war he’s waged. He can save Rey, and Ben, and all who will come after. He can fix this.
“Because I’m Anakin Skywalker,” he says, and for once the title is an honor, not a burden. “And Ben is my grandson.”
-:-
the world is
dark
empty.
something is wrong.
rey.
where is rey? is she
safe?
nothing.
no
not again
please.
the last time
when there was nothing
no. she’s
alive.
or it was
all
for
nothing.
nothing?
is that
what he is
now
his soul
(what soul?)
trapped in
limbo
-:-
“I need a favor.”
Ahsoka starts to glance skyward, instinctively searching for help from a higher power, then pauses when she sees Rey beside him. Staring at her rather than through her. “What kind of favor?”
He can tell by the look on her face that Ahsoka already knows she won’t like his answer. But stubbornness runs in the Skywalker line as much as sorrow does, and so the knowledge does little to stop him: “We’re going to save my grandson.”
“We?” She casts a look to Rey; the poor kid is still shell-shocked from the turn her life has taken and the truth of the power she’d very nearly sold her soul off to. ”Anakin.”
“Snips.”
“Anakin.”
“You know how dangerous it is to separate them.” She can hardly deny this, not after seeing how devastating Ben’s loss had been for the girl. Not with the knowledge that the young couple is connected mind and soul, and to tear one away is as good as sentencing the other to a slow, excruciating death.
“And you know the rules.”
No interfering. They have passed their time in the realm of the living, and now it is theirs no longer. They may guide those who come after, but they are never to involve themselves directly. And to outright lead Rey to the in-between realm her partner’s consciousness resides in now is interference of the highest order. The Force will be… displeased, to say the least.
Anakin has never given a damn about what the Force thinks, and he’s hardly going to start now.
“Please, Ahsoka.” Rey startles at the disembodied voice that reverberates around them, soft and pleading, but Anakin merely smiles: it would seem that Padmé, too, is casting her lot with his plan. “We can fix this.”
”Fix nature?” Regret is etched across her features, but it isn’t enough to turn her away from her duty. There’s a reason the galaxy has placed her in charge of its most precious secrets.
”There was nothing natural about it,” Rey says quietly, her voice as haunted as the hollow look in her eyes. “Please. I can’t—” She falls silent, but her words bleed into the Force: I can’t live like this. It’s eating me alive. And somewhere out there, in a realm only Ahsoka can reach, this same agony tears his grandson to pieces too.
“We failed them once, Ahsoka.” The way he’d once failed her, and she’d failed Luke, and Luke had failed Ben. A chain of guilt that they finally have the chance to break.
And finally, Ahsoka relents.
”I can’t promise you much time,” she warns. “Does she know what must be done?”
The bewildered look on the girl’s face is all the answer they need. “Ahsoka is the warden of the Vergence Scatter,” he explains. “A world between worlds, where every moment in time plays out simultaneously. And more importantly, where every soul that walks between life and death can be found.”
Typically, those that reside in the Vergence Scatter do so for only a short time. The sick and dying, hovering in those final few breaths. The lost and abandoned, pale and transient in their search for something to tie them down to the world of the living. But one half of a Dyad, kept alive by Rey’s every breath but unable to hold a corporeal form after Palpatine had ravaged their bond…
If there is anywhere in all the galaxy that they will be able to find Ben, it will be here.
”It’s dangerous for a living being to enter,” Ahsoka tells her. “Once inside, we won’t be able to reach you. If you’re lost…”
To her credit, Rey doesn’t falter. “I’ll do it,” she says, hands clenched into fists at her side. ”Anything to get him back.”
He knew there was a reason he liked this one.
”Someone will need to ground your physical form here.” Ahsoka eyes him expectantly, and he nods. “And Rey… it may not be enough.”
“What about two of us?” Padmé flickers into existence at his side, brow furrowed with the concentration of maintaining a physical form. Instantly, Ahsoka frowns, her thoughts jumping to the same conclusion as his own: she is barely strong enough to ground herself, let alone another being.
”It’s risky—”
“And sending Rey into the Vergence Scatter isn’t?” She fixes them both with a look that’s quailed Senators and generals alike. “She’s family now. That’s worth any risk.”
It’s painfully difficult to argue with the very point he himself has just made. Anakin concedes reluctantly, the heartbreaking surprise on Rey’s face enough to soften the blow of Padmé’s insistence. She deserves to know the unconditional love of a family after all she’s suffered, and he supposes even this small overture is a step in the right direction.
They have three powerful Force-users among their number. The Chosen One, the warden of the galaxy, and one half of the fabled Dyad. And Padmé of course, who makes up for in love what she lacks in power. Who better than to rend open the Force and restore true balance to his lineage? Even so, Anakin takes comfort in the faint pressure of Padmé’s hand in his own. They always have been stronger as one.
And now it is time to pass on that strength. Rey closes her eyes, following Ahsoka’s murmured instructions as the four of them prepare themselves. Relax. Open your mind. You’ll retain control of your consciousness, but we cannot lead you unless you let us in. She surrenders her mind hesitantly, made skittish by past invaders and yet brave enough to trust them anyway. Anakin and Padmé slip into the living Force around them, taking her Force-signature in their cupped hands as gently as one might hold an infant. Ahsoka’s voice grows distant, a relic from an abandoned realm.
And they enter, as one, into a world between worlds.
-:-
she is
lost.
(rey? can you
hear me?)
padmé?
what
is this place?
(try to
relax.
can you
feel it?)
feel?
there is
nothing
to feel.
(ben. think of ben.)
ben.
rey?
that name
she knows it.
she knows.
(move quickly, rey.)
(we cannot
rey?
ground you
forever.)
he knows
this name.
something is
here.
she is
not
alone.
alone?
she had told him
once
that he is not.
alone, that is.
how strange
to think of
now.
she calls
out
with no
voice.
but her
soul
speaks
without words.
someone is
here.
and that
someone
knows him.
he exists
after all.
she reaches
he calls
out.
and the force
sings
with bliss.
a dyad
reunited
at last.
(it’s time to come home.)
-:-
When they resurface from the Vergence Scatter, Rey no longer stands alone in the world of the living. Her trembling hand holds tight to an equally shaken Ben, their bodies instinctively reaching for one another in this foreign ground.
“Rey?” Worry crosses his features at first, assuming the worst— that it is she who has joined him in the realm of the dead, rather than he himself returning to the living. But he must see the difference, the way the colors of their world shine a bit brighter, the hues more vibrant in life than their muted dead counterparts, and the warmth of her flesh alone should be enough to confirm beyond any shadow of doubt. He is alive once more, granted a second chance by the love of his family— a fitting fate for one willing to sacrifice his own life out of love.
Rey beams at him, the stormclouds of her grief parting to reveal the brilliant light within. “Ben,” she whispers, and this time her smile does not fade. This time he does not slip away. Anakin can read the hesitation in the backs of their minds, though: this moment feels too good to be true, a mere fantasy of what Exegol could have been.
“You’re alive, kid.” They turn as one to face Anakin, the galaxy expanding once more to include the forgotten ghosts. “It’s not a dream.”
Relief crashes through the Force, followed almost instantly by recognition. He isn’t surprised— they look so alike, despite the decades separating their lives, and he must seem like a twisted kind of mirror to the boy. “Grandfather.”
“Ben,” Anakin deadpans. He is as unused to this role as his grandson; neither of them had learned how to truly function within a family. And so it will have to be enough to treat this kid as an equal, a young man who has carried all the same burdens Anakin himself has known— but unlike Anakin, he now has the chance to choose a brighter path. Padmé smiles faintly as she nudges his arm, nodding her encouragement: you’ve waited a lifetime to speak to him. Go.
“I’d tell you to treat her well, but…” He casts a look to Rey, who offers a soft smile of her own. She’s exhausted from the ordeal, but carrying it well. He supposes the reuniting of her soul’s twin might be helping with that. “Something tells me this one can handle herself.”
And this, too, has played out before. Padmé, battle-worn and holding her head high, choosing to love despite the shattered galaxy around her. Choosing peace. Choosing life. Perhaps this time, this young couple will succeed where they had failed.
“Your family loves you, kid. We haven’t always been able to show it…” And stars if he doesn’t regret this, but the time for digging up the pain of the past is over. “But we’ve been watching you as best we can. We never stopped caring.” Not even when the Jedi Temple went up in flames and the Force wept for its lost children. Not even when the crimson blade had plunged into Han Solo’s heart and shattered Ben’s in the process.
“Go,” Padmé murmurs, her voice ephemeral as she sinks back into the Force. “Live your lives. All of your lives. But never be afraid to turn to us for help. We’ll always be here.”
“Always,” Ahsoka echoes. She’s kept her distance this far, watching their reunion with something like pride in her eyes, but she pitches in now with an emphatic nod. She, too, is family, after all.
It’s Rey who moves first. She steps forward quickly, hesitating only a heartbeat before throwing her arms around them both. Ben is quick to follow, the two of them sinking into Anakin and Padmé’s ghostly embraces. For just a moment, the love between them all is enough to bring back the slightest sensation to Anakin’s consciousness. For just a moment, he feels alive.
And then the young couple steps away, fading back into their world and leaving Anakin to his own. They lose themselves in one another, smiling with unbridled joy at the possibilities ahead— far more numerous than they’d ever imagined, now that the heavy curtain of grief and legacy no longer looms over their heads. And when they lean in to share a kiss, Ben holding Rey in his arms like spun glass, like sunlight, like the most precious being in all the galaxy, it is not the past Anakin sees any longer— it’s the future.
And as they walk hand in hand towards all that life has to offer them, he truly believes that this time…
This time, they’ll get it right.